Eternity
by Hoshi-tachi
Summary: Can the crew of Serenity help someone caught in the ravages of Fate and his own mind? AU Serenity, warnings for violence and profanity.
1. An Unlikely Rescue

**Title**: Eternity  
**Author**: hoshi-tachi  
**Category**: Harry Potter (crossover with Serenity, the movie)  
**Rating**: T  
**Pairings**: Canon movie pairings.  
**Summary**: Can the crew of Serenity help someone caught in the ravages of Fate and his own mind?  
**Warnings**: Violence, profanity.  
**Distribution**: Ask me first, but I'm not likely to say no.  
**Disclaimer**: I own nothing. I gain nothing but satisfaction from the writing of this story.

* * *

Dr. Philbert Mathias really wished the government inspector would go away. 

The work they were doing with the children was incredibly delicate, and having some government goon standing over his shoulder while he and his technicians worked was simply irritating as all get-out. It was a living example of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle- that which is observed is changed by the act of observation. His presence here was tainting the results of their tests. _Why can't they just read my reports and be satisfied with that?_

Of course, Mathias was not foolish enough to say any of that out loud. One did not even mouth such words in front of a government inspector if one wished to keep one's high-paying government job examining young people with impressive minds.

Right now, they were working on River Tam, who slept in one of the dream chairs, which was in the center of the room in an inclined position. Injector needles had been placed at different parts of Tam's cranium in order to stimulate various areas of her brain. Facing her in another chair was her anchor, young M12-31.

"She's dreaming," Technician Siegal reported from his post at a monitoring station.

Next to him, Technician Waits asked, "Nightmares?"

Siegal nodded. "Off the charts. Scary monsters."

Mathias had to bite back a rebuke at such unscientific terminology. Were the inspector not here, he would have let Siegal have it, but he wanted to create the impression that he ran a tight ship here. "Let's amp it up. Delcium, eight-drop," he ordered, making a notation on his clipboard.

He looked over at the inspector. The man had a pitiless face, showing no emotion whatsoever, and carried an eagle-crested baton that served no purpose he could see except to scare people into thinking the man would use it.

"See," he told the inspector, "most of our best work is done while they're asleep. We can monitor and direct their subconscious, implant suggestions..."

Tam convulsed, and the inspector's eyes widened in the first hint of an expression the doctor had seen, however brief.

Smiling gently as he hid his flash of triumph, Mathias reassured the man. "It's a little startling to see, but the results are spectacular. Especially in this case. River Tam is our star pupil."

The inspector nodded. "I've heard that."

"She's a genius. Her mental capacity is extraordinary, even with the side effects." Mathias was wincing even as the words left his mouth. Mention of the side effects always provoked irrelevant questions about the nature of those side effects, and Mathias was well and truly sick of justifying what was a necessary part of the process.

Sure enough, the inspector made a request. "Tell me about them."

Mathias held in a sigh of annoyance, which would surely have displeased the inspector. "Well, obviously, she's unstable. The neural stripping gives them heightened cognitive reception, but it also destabilizes their own reality matrix. It manifests as borderline schizophrenia, which at this point is the price for being truly psychic."

"What use do we have for a psychic if she's insane?"

Again, Mathias held back the sigh, but this time it was even more of a struggle. He'd already answered this question, more than once, when Parliament had come by to see the "academy students." In fact, the inspector's presence in light of that visit by Parliament was more than a little insulting. "I don't have to tell you the security potential of someone who can read minds. And she has lucid periods– we hope to improve on the– " _Oh, the hell with this. _"I'm sorry, sir, I have to ask if there's some reason for this inspection."

The inspector turned to look at Mathias with his brutally emotionless gaze. "Am I making you nervous?"

_Hell yes! _"Key members of Parliament have personally observed this subject. I was told their support of this project was unanimous. The demonstration of her power-"

Turning his back on Mathias, the inspector looked at Tam again. "How is she physically?"

At that, Mathias smiled. This was his favorite part, the one element of the project that had gone beyond expectations. "Like nothing we've ever seen. All our subjects are conditioned for combat, but River– she's a creature of extraordinary grace."

"Yes. She always did love to dance."

Mathias didn't like the sound of that. Up until that last sentence, the inspector had been speaking in an almost-bored monotone. But just then he sounded... wistful?

Before he could say anything, the inspector's focus shifted. "And the boy?"

"M12-31. No known identity. He was picked up on Londinium, after several witnesses described strange things happening around him. If there was anything useable there, though, the neural stripping destroyed it." Amazing. Mathias was actually getting better at reading the inspector's nearly-nonexistent expressions. That one was _definitely _displeasure. "It does occasionally happen," he rushed on defensively. "There's no way to tell beforehand who will or will not respond to the treatment."

The other man studied the sleeping boy. "If he's not psychic, why is he here?"

Mathias was suddenly aware of the boy's wasted appearance, all the more apparent next to Tam's physical perfection. He hadn't started out like that, merely thinner than was normal, but after nearly a year of being constantly drugged into unconsciousness with little exercise, he looked like nothing more than skin stretched over bones. "We were about to dispose of him, when one of our technicians discovered something surprising. When Number 31 and River are nearby River's test results are much better than when they are apart. The increase can be as much as three hundred percent."

The inspector's eyebrow inched ever so microscopically skyward. "What causes it?" he asked.

"I mentioned River's reality matrix is unstable. As far as we can tell, she uses him as a kind of anchor, something that helps her, well, find her way back to herself. She's a bit more lucid when he's in the same room, even."

"I see..." The inspector's face went even blanker than before. "The plan will have to change a bit, then."

The doctor blinked. _"Plan, what plan?"_ he would have asked, except that the inspector was already moving. He dropped to one knee and slammed his eagle baton on the floor.

One and a half seconds later, Mathias's world went dark.

-**I**-**I**-**I**-

_Thank you, Garcia_, Simon thought as the bouncing betty disguised as an eagle exploded, sending a wave of energy through the room at about neck level. It rendered Mathias and his two flunkies unconscious in an instant, just as Garcia had promised.

He rushed to the massive chair in which River lay sleeping.

It had taken all of Simon's self-control to keep himself from reacting to seeing River for the first time in over two years– and worse, to see her full of tubes and needles, like someone who had just had a brain operation. For all he knew, she had; based on what Mathias told him, he wouldn't put anything past these butchers. He hadn't had the chance to discover the extent of what they'd done to her, and now he wouldn't, as his window of opportunity to get himself, River, and now their mysterious third member out of there was closing rapidly. And the boy _was_ going to complicate things; Simon wasn't at all sure he could get all three of them out with the plan he and Garcia had concocted, but it seemed River needed him to even function.

But he had to try. Besides, leaving a child in these bastards' hands stuck in his craw, and he imagined Garcia and the others would be thrilled to see two freed instead of just one. They'd said if Simon provided the money, they'd do the rest, and they had. Simon had no idea whose uniform he was wearing, or whose credentials had let him in the door, but they were good enough to enable him to see Dr. Mathias on the pretense of a surprise inspection.

Gently removing the probes from River's head, he then reached into his briefcase and pulled out some cotton swabs to stop the bleeding. "River," he whispered. "Wake up. Please, it's Simon. River. It's your brother. Wake up!"

Miraculously, she began to stir. Satisfied with that, and that the bleeding from the tiny cuts made by the probes had stopped, Simon turned towards the other chair, removing his inspector's uniform as he went to reveal an orderly's tunic like the two technicians on the ground were wearing. He bent over the skeletal child. There were no restraints, but none were needed; Simon could smell the drugs on his breath. He pulled off the simple electrodes ringing the boy's head.

"Simon."

At that, Simon almost jumped out of his skin. River was standing behind him, without his having heard her move. True, she had always moved quietly before, and her feet were bare now, but still…

"They know you've come," she said, with more certainty than he'd ever heard from her before as she moved to the boy's side. One hand went out to touch his cheek. "Is the little feather going home with us?"

Simon nodded, a little startled, and leaned over to lift the child in his arms. In the back of his mind, his doctor's voice was already making diagnoses. He appeared to be eleven or twelve, but weighed nearly nothing. Severe muscular atrophy, so severe he had to wonder how rarely the boy _wasn't _drugged into oblivion; it was fairly obvious as well that while they'd given him the proper nutrition (judging by his skin, extremely pale but healthy) they hadn't given him more than was necessary to maintain the bare minimum of health. That part of his mind was screaming at the butchers who ran this place, and obviously saw no more value in a human being than what he could do for them.

With the boy cradled in his arms, they stepped out into the corridor, which was blissfully empty. The other "students" were nowhere to be found, and to be truthful Simon didn't spend much time looking. He had what he'd come for.

"We can't make it to the surface from inside." Before he could say anything else, footsteps rang out from further down the corridor. _That room had to be monitored, so that's probably the guards wondering why the government inspector just knocked out a doctor and two technicians and sprung a couple of students._ "Find a–"

Before Simon could finish the instruction, his sister had grabbed the boy from him and scampered over on top of some lab equipment. As he watched, slack-jawed, she jumped up high and did a half-flip that ended with her split legs braced against the walls. She took hold of a sprinkler with one hand for added support, still holding the limp form close to her with the other.

_Mathias wasn't kidding about her grace…_

The doors then opened to reveal, not guards, but two more doctors, who didn't even acknowledge Simon's presence. Even as a doctor himself, he had never understood the dismissive arrogance that most of his colleagues felt towards medical employees without degrees– which was probably why he tended to get along better with the nurses and medtechs than the other doctors. Right now, though, he was grateful for it, as the pair ignored him and didn't notice River on the ceiling.

Once they were gone, River carefully leapt back down, and Simon took the child back. They headed for the ventilation shaft Garcia had decided was the best way out. Only fifteen feet by fifteen feet, the shaft went all the way up through the various levels of the underground complex to the surface, and down past Simon's ability to see. An awed pat of him wondered if it went all the way to the planet's molten core.

Opening the window that led to the shaft, Simon and River got in. River started to climb up, and the man tried to figure out how to get his passenger up the ladder. As he thought, he wedged the window shut with his baton. It proved to be a wise move, as two guards were running towards them. They fired their lasers towards the fugitives, but the beams didn't penetrate the glass.

Simon touched the remote on his wrist as the guards spoke angrily into their coms. Above them, his little ship hovered into view, and a hatch on the bottom opened and extended down towards them.

_Holy hell, were they actually pulling this off?_

The panel stopped a foot over River's head. "Get on!" her brother called out, and once she had obeyed handed the boy up to her. The guards were resorting now to pounding on the glass, and brute force was beginning to accomplish what the lasers had not. Simon touched the button again, and the panel rose back up to the ship.

The escape had been accomplished so quickly ships hadn't yet mobilized to stop them, and they were able to lift off into space unhindered. His ship was tiny, meant only for one person, and with three it would be unlivable. It took some fast talking to convince River to climb into the cryo chamber in the little cargo compartment; only the knowledge that her "little feather" would be going in with her was persuasion enough.

Simon was worried about the boy. It had been a few hours since their escape, but he still showed no signs of waking up; he would have to go into cryo still drugged to the gills, which went against every medical instinct Simon had, but there was no other choice.

Carefully, he lay the boy down next to his sister, who curled around him protectively. His last sight of them before closing the chamber was of River placing a gentle kiss on the zigzagging scar on the child's forehead, and then they'd been locked away, to sleep their way to safety.

He hoped.

* * *

A/N: Please, please don't get on my case about another new story. Choir Regionals start tomorrow, and saying I'm all nerves right now would be an understatement. I needed to relax a bit, and working on my established stories was just making me tenser. 

Obviously, this is an AU of Serenity, but HP is canon at least up until HBP. Possibly beyond.

As a sidenote, I have the movie. I have the book based on the movie. I have not, however, ever seen a complete episode of Firefly. Blame any lapses in my canon knowledge on that.

26 January 2006


	2. A Tumultuous Landing

**Warnings and Disclaimers:** As a reviewer reminded, I will sometimes pull a line from the book. Tried not to do that with this chapter, beyond the actual dialogue.

* * *

When Mal walked into the cockpit, he found just about what he'd expected to see. Wash was bent over the controls, of course, using his considerable skills to bring the ship in safely, and Harry was curled up in the other chair, his astonishingly green eyes fixed on the pilot's hands.

"Not too much longer, Cap'n," Wash told him, keeping an eye on the hull temperature indicator.

Mal nodded, pleased. And why not? Things were going according to plan and he had a nice easy heist to look forward to. Provided, of course, that their usual luck didn't decide to make an appearance...

"It's screaming," he heard a quiet voice say, with those oddly accented words that always made Mal wonder just where in the 'verse the child had come from, since he had never before or since heard its like.

"What's screaming?" The ex-soldier asked, resting a hand on the boy's mess of dark curls.

Harry's eyes didn't even flicker from their intent, yet all-too-blank stare. Wash didn't pay him any attention, used to the audience after so many months. "It hurts. It can't take it anymore. It wants to give up." The near-murmuring stopped for a moment. "It's going to give up."

Mal felt a familiar wave of pity rise up through him. He knew both River and Harry had been abused by the Alliance, left with only bare threads of their sanity intact, but the damage done always seemed so much more apparent with the younger boy. "What's going to give up?" he asked again.

There was a nerve-shattering tearing noise from _Serenity_'s bow, and Mal looked up just in time to see something fly past into the stratosphere. The head beneath his palm moved, and he automatically looked back down into eyes that for once almost looked sane.

"That."

Wash's eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. "Whoa! Did you _see_ that?"

_Serenity_ shuddered violently, even though Wash's hands were steady on the controls. Which meant...

Mal paled just the tiniest bit, though of course he would never have admitted it. Not without several drinks in him, anyway. "Was that the primary buffer panel?"

The pilot winced. "It did seem to resemble-"

Mal interrupted, anger roughening his voice. "Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my gorram ship for no apparent reason?" Again, _Serenity_ moved in a fashion it definitely was not meant to, and Mal had to bend his knees to keep from falling over.

Wash winced again. "Looks like."

"I thought Kaylee checked our entry couplings," Mal muttered half to himself. "I have a very clear memory of it."

Wash's hands were no longer merely firm on the controls; his knuckles shone white. "Yeah, well, if she doesn't give us some extra flow from the engine room to offset the burn-through, this landing is gonna get pretty interesting."

Mal shook his head and, after a moment's thought, put his hands over Harry's ears. The boy took no notice. "Define interesting."

"'Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die'?"

The captain growled, but Wash didn't even flinch. He released Harry, glad he'd thought to cover the boy's ears; it wasn't like Harry would have panicked at hearing of their impending doom- having gotten the nearly-catatonic kid to almost respond to what was actually going on around him marked this as a special day on the calendar already- but it made _him_ feel just a bit better.

A step took Mal to the wall-mounted com. "This is the captain. There's a little problem with our entry sequence. We may experience slight turbulence and then explode." He shut the com off and looked at his pilot. "Can you shave the vector-?"

"I'm doing it!" Wash snapped. "It's not enough."

Ordinarily, captains were the ultimate authority aboard ship. In practice, when they had a pilot as good as Wash on board, they learned to cut a little slack in the 'demanding respect' department. Mal scowled but said nothing.

Wash keyed the intercom built into the pilot's station with one hand, a maneuver that made Mal wince when it let go of the controls. "Kaylee!" he called out.

There wasn't anything more he could do on the bridge except distract the pilot, which would be a _very_ bad idea, so Mal turned to leave. He briefly wondered if he should grab Harry and bring him along, but dismissed it; despite becoming a common fixture onboard _Serenity_, the kid had never once been underfoot. "Just get us on the ground!" he ordered over his shoulder.

Behind him, Wash grimaced. "That part'll happen, pretty definitely..."

When he reached the corridor running through the living quarters Jayne was just leaving his room. "We're gonna explode? I don't wanna explode!" the burly man protested.

Mal blinked at him, taking in the vast assortment of weaponry the mercenary had somehow managed to sling about his person. He was fairly sure he recognized at least half of his armory there. "Jayne, how many weapons you plan on bringing?" he asked, dumbfounded. "You only got the two arms."

Jayne would have shrugged if he hadn't been so heavily burdened. "I get excitable as to choice. Like to have my options open."

The captain frowned. "I don't plan on any shooting taking place during this job."

Jayne scowled. "Well, what you plan and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar."

Mal held back a wince. That was too true to be at all comfortable. As he searched for something to say in reply, his eyes caught on a few certain items hanging on the other man's chest. "Jayne," he said slowly. "What did I say about grenades?"

Jayne's scowl grew. "Not to bring 'em out when the kid's around. Don't see him 'round here anywhere." He waved at the corridor, empty but for the two of them.

"Thought I said havin' them on board at all was a bad idea. Or do you _want_ a repeat of that little incident?" They both winced. Personally, Mal would never forget the sight of Jayne frozen in terror in his bunk while a curious Harry twisted the timer back and forth on one of his grenades, muttering to himself all the while about making sure dinner didn't burn.

"_No_ grenades," the captain ordered with a decisive nod.

"Are we crashing again?" a cool voice asked from behind them, and they turned to see Zoë standing there.

Mal sighed. "Talk to your husband. Is the mule prepared?"

"Good to go, sir. Just loading her up," his second-in-command replied.

Once less thing to worry about… Mal nodded and turned to go check on Kaylee. As he made his way to the engine room, he could hear the conversation behind him continue.

"Are those grenades?" Zoë asked, a critical eyebrow creeping upwards.

If it had been anyone but the mercenary, that would have been a pout on his lips. "Cap'n doesn't want 'em."

"We're robbing the place; we're not occupying it…"

Anything else was lost as the captain turned into the dining room. The ship shook again as he made his way through the room, and he took off at a run for the next corridor and the engine room attached to it. Inside, _Serenity_'s gigantic engine rotated furiously above his head, and her mechanic was dashing back and forth with a happy smile on her face.

"Kaylee, what in the sphincter of hell are you playing at?" Mal demanded. "We got the primary buffer-"

"Everything's shiny, Cap'n," she interrupted, almost sounding _happy_ with the turn of events. "Not to fret."

Mal growled. "You told me-" _Serenity_ bucked again, interrupting him a second time. "You told me the entry couplings would hold for another week!"

Kaylee didn't even look up at him as she replied. "That was six months ago, Cap'n."

He had to grit his teeth to keep from swearing. While personally satisfying, it wouldn't do them any good. "My ship don't crash," he finally bit out. "If she crashes, _you_ crashed her."

The mechanic didn't look up from her work, which was probably a good thing, he reflected, as they'd most likely crash if she did. He turned to leave, only to come face to face with the last adult member of his crew.

"Doctor," Mal acknowledged, guiding him away from the engine room. With Kaylee's all-too-obvious crush on the young man, it just wasn't safe to have him in the same room with her when she needed to concentrate. "Guess I need to get innocked 'fore we hit planetside."

The ship rocked again. "Bit of a rockety ride. Nothing to worry about," he finished.

Simon Tam's expression didn't change from its accustomed blank mask. Sometimes Mal wondered if him and Harry were related after all, for all the expression the two of them showed added up together didn't even make up one normal person's catalogue. "I'm not worried."

"Fear is nothing to be ashamed of, Doc." Mal could never resist needling the other man.

"This isn't fear, this is anger," Simon rebuked, stopping in the middle of the corridor.

Mal didn't bother hiding his laughter. "Well, it's kinda hard to tell the one from the other, face like yours."

The doctor's lips _might_ have tightened just a touch. "I imagine if it were fear, my eyes would be wider."

"I'll look for that next time." Mal tried to continue past Simon, but couldn't.

"You're not taking her."

Mal's jaw clenched, and this time when he tried to pass the doctor let him, having gotten to his point. "No, no, that's not a thing I'm interested in talking over with-"

"She's not going with you. That's _final_!"

The captain stopped dead. He might put up with a lot as the price for having some of the best people as crew, but that was more disrespect than he was _ever_ going to take on board _his ship_! He spun. "I hear the words 'that's final' come out of your mouth ever again, they truly will be."

Simon didn't reply, seemingly taken aback by the sudden threat, and Mal turned back to his path. "This is _my_ boat. Y'all are guests on it."

"Guests? I earn my passage, Captain."

That was true enough; with as often as _Serenity_'s crew was injured somehow or another, having a trained- better than trained- medic on board was worth his weight in gold. When he brought two guests on board that were being hunted by the Alliance, though, the price was a hell of a lot higher. Mal wasn't a complete scoundrel. He was willing to take the kid on for free, not least because he'd gotten pretty fond of him, but River Tam was plenty old enough to make her own contribution to all of their welfares. "And it's time your little sister learned from your fine example," was all he said out loud.

The Doc didn't seem to get the message. "I've earned my passage treating bullet holes, knife wounds, laser burns…"

Mal shrugged. "Some of our jobs are trickier than others." They were walking past the guest quarters now.

"And you want to put my sister in the middle of that?"

"Didn't say 'want', said 'will.' It's one job, Doc. She'll be fine." They entered the infirmary. Mal leaned against the patient table as Simon prepared a hypo. "She's a reader. Sees into the truth of things. Might see trouble before it's coming, which is of use to me."

"And that's you're guiding star, isn't it? What's of use?"

Another laugh came boiling up, but there was little humor in this one. "Honestly, Doctor, I think we may really crash this time anyway."

Mal suppressed a wince as the hypo was poked into his arm just a little harder than it needed to be. "Do you understand what I've gone through to keep River away from the Alliance? And Harry, too?" Simon said quietly.

If there was one thing Mal couldn't stand, it was folks who assumed their troubles were the worst ones in the whole 'verse. He challenged anyone who thought that way to go through even a day in Serenity Valley and come out singing the same tune. "I do, and it's a fact we here have been courteous enough to keep to our own selves."

Now Simon really did look afraid. "Are you threatening to-"

Mal cut him off. "I look out for me and mine. That don't include 'less I conjure it does. Now you stuck a thorn in the Alliance's paw, and that tickles me a bit, but it also means I gotta step twice as fast to avoid them, and that means turning down plenty of jobs. Even honest ones." His business in the infirmary finished, he stepped out the door. If he's hoped to escape the Doc, though, he was disappointed as the man followed him out.

"Every year since the war, the Alliance pushes further out, fences off another piece of the 'verse," Mal continued, almost to himself. "Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another." Why the hell was he trying to justify himself? "So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don't push me, and I won't push you, _dong le ma_?"

Simon didn't reply, which was a very good thing as Mal saw it. Any more arguing and he might have given in to the temptation to put a bullet into him. An unimportant part of him, that is. The Doc might be annoying as hell, but he knew his business like no one else Mal'd met.

Zoë and Jayne were loading up the new mule as he headed over to them. Along the way another quiver went through the deck, and Mal looked at his second-in-command. "Zoë, is Wash gonna straighten this boat out before we get flattened?"

Her lips curled up into a little smirk. "Like a downy feather, sir. Nobody flies like my mister."

As though on cue, everything seemed to get just a bit heavier, as deceleration pushed down on them. A moment later, there was a last, tiny shudder, one he barely felt through the soles of his boots as _Serenity_ came to a nice, quiet halt.

Mal grinned and smacked the nearest intercom. "Not a bad landin' there, Wash."

"_Told you we'd hit the ground, Mal."_

And to think, getting to the planet was supposed to be the _easy_ part of the gorram plan…

* * *

A/N: stretches And there's number two. It's odd… as though now that the tension from Regionals is gone, it's suddenly a lot easier to write… Oh, didn't make those, by the way. Got a good score on my solo, but my sight-reading sucked. I panic when you make me stand; sitting I'm cool, but standing… shudders

Grins And thanks, guys! I've never had such an enthusiastic response to a first chapter before. Hugs

* * *

1 February 2006


	3. A Fortunate Outcome

**Warnings and Disclaimers: **Some quotage in there, though I'm trying to do things a bit differently from the movie. And if this feels a bit rushed, it's because I've written it all since about eight-thirty this morning.

* * *

Simon sighed and turned his back on the crew members loading up the mule. "Now, River, you stay behind the others," he told his sister, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her too-big eyes. "If there's fighting, you drop to the floor, or run away. It's okay to leave them to die."

The seventeen-year-old gave him a bemused look before slipping on her goggles. "I'm the brains of the operation," she told him in all seriousness.

"We should hit town right during Sunday worship. Won't be any crowds," Zoë said as she, River, Jayne and the captain climbed into the mule.

Mal settled into his seat. "If Fanty and Mingo were right about the payroll, this could look to be a sunny day for us."

River abruptly turned and looked towards the cargo bay's entrance. Simon followed her gaze to see Harry standing there looking back at his adopted sister. The doctor couldn't help but be a bit startled; usually, getting Harry to leave the cockpit required leading him by the hand. He'd never seen the child leave voluntarily before, though he was perfectly capable of making his way back. Wash had once joked that if the Alliance hadn't messed him up so bad, he would've been going through flight school right now.

Feeling a new surge of determination, Simon turned and walked over to the mule. "Captain, I'll ask you one last time-"

Mal rolled his eyes. "Doctor, I'm taking your sister under my protection here. If anything happens to her, anything at all, I swear to you I will get _very_ choked up. Honestly. There could be tears."

The only thing that stopped the normally peaceable Simon from planting his fist in the man's face was Zoë revving up the mule and lifting off. In moments they were out of sight.

Kaylee came up beside the fuming man. "Don't mind the captain none, Simon. I know he'll look out for her."

His lips thinned in disgust. "It's amazing. I bring River all the way out to the raggedy edge of the 'verse so she can hide from the Alliance by _robbing banks_."

The mechanic smiled cheerfully. "It's just a little trading station. They'll be back 'fore you can spit. Not that you spit..." she hastened to add.

Simon was silent for a long moment, still staring out the cargo bay doors even though the mule was long gone. Then he turned and walked over to the young boy still hovered in the background. "Came to see her off, did you?" he said quietly, stopping in front of him.

Harry nodded, looking up at him. "She was very excited about going," he said solemnly. "She loves _Serenity_, but she gets so very bored sometimes."

The doctor sighed. "I know." He ran his fingers through the boy's hair, a habit he'd noticed quite a few of the crew picking up as well. Then he smiled. "That was fairly lucid, Harry. You're doing much better."

But the child's attention had already strayed, back to the slowly closing doors. "Is the Ball over, then? But we never danced like the Professor said."

Simon sighed again as Kaylee approached. "We can't expect a miracle, I suppose."

"Me, I think the fact he's alive and can function a'tall is miracle enough," she replied. "He has been gettin' better, though."

Simon nodded, distracted as a thought occurred to him. "Has anyone made sure Harry's eaten?" The Alliance had only ever fed Harry through a tube, and once the doctor had gotten access to proper instruments to scan him with, he'd discovered the boy had been malnourished to begin with. By the time he was free on _Serenity_, Harry had forgotten how to eat properly, and even after nearly a year needed to be reminded when to eat, for he simply wouldn't on his own. It was one of the reasons Simon never even considered parting ways with the boy.

Kaylee frowned, a rare expression for the bubbly girl. "I don't know. With everything so hectic gettin' ready for the heist, I can't say as anyone remembered."

Simon held out his hand, and Harry automatically took it. "We'd better go get him something, then."

She grinned, following along behind them. "Flash-frozen veggies and pseudo-meat paste. Yum."

-

An hour or so later, Simon was waiting in the cockpit with Wash for any sign of the mule. Harry was back in his usual spot in the copilot's chair, for once not watching Wash fly, but rather swiveling his head back and forth as the doctor paced.

"She's seventeen! How could he even _think_ about putting her in this kind of danger?" he ranted to his audience. "If she gets hurt, I'm swear I'm going to…"

Wash pushed himself up from his chair to stop Simon with a hand on the shoulder. "Easy, there. She'll be fine. This one's supposed to be a cakewalk, everyone out at church and such. What could happen?"

Simon scowled. "Plenty, mostly because of that 'supposed to be.' Since when have any of Captain Reynolds' plans gone the way he meant them to?"

The pilot thought for a long minute. "Um. The hospital job?"

"You mean the one _I_ planned?"

"Oh, right." Wash shrugged helplessly. "Well, River's got my wife looking out for her, at least. Zoë won't let anything happen to her."

Simon closed his eyes, reaching for the calm and control he'd had trained into him since birth, and that had slowly been slipping away ever since they'd come out to the Rim. Wash kept that comforting hand on his shoulder as he composed himself. "I know she'll do her best, but-"

The sudden whine of _Serenity_'s engines interrupted him, and they both spun to see Harry leaning out over the console, his finger on the guilty button. "Harry!" Simon shouted, dismayed. "What do you think you're doing?"

"The Death Eaters are coming," Harry told them, his eyes wide and afraid, such an abnormality for the normally expressionless boy that for a moment they didn't move.

Wash reached for the console to shut down the engines as Kaylee's startled voice came over the intercom, wanting to know what was gorram happening. The boy's hand caught his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip before his hand was halfway there. "No!"

Simon stepped forward. "Harry, you know you're not supposed to play with the controls. Now, let Wash stop the engines-"

Harry shook his head violently. "No! She's afraid, because the Death Eaters are coming. She wants us."

"Damn, he's strong. What happened to the Harry who came on board, the one who couldn't even walk on his own?" Wash asked, trying to free his wrist.

Simon bit his lip. With Harry this deep in his delusion… They needed to try another approach, unless they wanted to try to physically subdue him, and that might hurt the boy. "Harry," he said soothingly. "It's all right. The Death Eaters went somewhere else. We're fine."

"Just what _are_ Death Eaters, anyway?"

Harry blinked at his prisoner. "They eat death," he said matter-of-factly, and the unspoken 'no duh' tacked onto the end of that was so loud Wash winced.

"Right, should've guessed that…"

But the boy was suddenly thoughtful, tilting his head to the side as though he were listening to something they couldn't hear. "No," he said slowly, gradually relaxing his grip. The pilot freed his hand with a relieved sound. "They don't eat death."

Simon relaxed a bit, now that it seemed Harry was coming back to himself. "They don't?"

Harry shook his head, curling into himself in the seat. He wrapped his arms around his legs, shivering. "They eat you _before_ you're dead," he murmured, his voice disgusted.

The two men blinked at each other. "Harry," the doctor began, stepping towards him.

The radio crackled.

"_Wash, get the gorram ship movin'! We got Reavers!"_

-

"_Wash, baby, can you hear me?"_ Zoë asked, her voice made tinny by the speakers.

Wash punched a button with one hand, the other guiding the ship off the ground. "We're in the air, baby. You got someone behind you?"

"_That was fast. And there's a Reaver skiff on our behinds."_

The pilot's expression could only be described as half grin, half pained grimace. "Yeah, well, Harry decided to warm up the engines for us a couple of minutes ago."

The seconds of silence over the air spoke volume. "_That's… strange,"_ she finally said.

"Tell me about it… Good thing, too, or I'd be a lot more worried right now."

"_You should still be worrying. We're not gonna reach you in time."_

Wash patted the console reassuringly, though in truth it had a greater effect on himself than on anyone else. "Just keep moving, honey. We're coming to you."

Simon stood behind Harry, one hand resting on his shoulder. The boy was quiet again, though the alertness in his eyes hadn't quite faded back to his usual incoherency. "River," the man murmured, paler than usual. "God, I hope she's all right…"

"She isn't," Harry told him gravely. Simon looked at him, horror in his eyes. After the way the child had somehow known about the Reavers, he wouldn't put it past him to know how his sister was doing. "She swallowed a bug."

The doctor stared at him for a long minute, then sighed, shaking his head to get rid of the fanciful thoughts. Starting the engines had only been a fluke, a spark of childlike curiosity. Harry wasn't going to just magically get better.

_Serenity_ flew on, passing low over scrub and craggy bluffs. "Get some distance on 'em," Wash said into the receiver as they came over an area of smoother ground that stretched into the horizon. "You come to the flats, I want you to swing 'round. Gonna try a barn swallow. Simon, open her up," he told the doctor, who nodded and hastened out the door.

"A barn swallow isn't all that complicated," Wash told his silent audience, anxiety loosening his tongue. "Really, it isn't, you just need a couple of decent pilots. My baby's just going to turn 'round the other way and hit the gas while we come up behind her. Scoop her right on up. No trouble to it at all."

Apparently the boy's unusual spate of talkativeness had all been used up, though, because he just looked back at the pilot with big green eyes. Wash sighed. "Right."

It wasn't long before the mule's tracker was bleeping on the radar, and he triggered the radio again. "Okay, baby, we've talked this through."

"_Talkin' ain't doin'."_

Wash grimaced. Through the thick windshield they could see the mule and the trail of dust it left, as well as the larger skimmer a bit farther away. As they watched, the mule abruptly spun to head in the other direction, and Wash lined up _Serenity_ with the mule's stern. They were almost there…

"Don't slow down!" he yelled. Then the mule had been scooped up into the cargo bay, and the ship was rising.

Though, not rising quite quickly enough, as their keel scraped the top of the Reaver ship with a tooth-aching screech. Wash heard a noise to the side, and looked over to see the copilot's chair empty.

-

The cargo bay looked like a disaster area. The mule hadn't landed properly, leaving deep scrapes on the deck plates, and wreckage from the Reaver ship littered the floor. Mal groaned as he picked himself up off the deck. Jayne had been thrown clear of the mule as well, but Zoë and River were still inside.

There was a flash of movement that resolved itself into the Doc, running over to check on his sister. "River?"

The girl looked at him, an unhappy pout on her lips. "I swallowed a bug."

For some reason an odd look passed over the Doc's face, before it was as blank as ever. Kaylee came running into the bay, then. "Are you okay?" she asked Simon breathlessly.

"Is _he_ okay?" Mal grumbled. Shit, the kid hadn't even been in any danger, not like the rest of them!

There was another flash of movement that the captain caught from the corner of his eye, coming from a direction there shouldn't have been anything moving. His head snapped around to see a bloody, disfigured body charging towards him with its point-filed teeth bared. Mal's gun was in his hand without conscious thought, and along with Jayne and Zoë, he unloaded as many bullets into the Reaver as he could.

Reavers took some killing. This one took eight, ten, twelve shots and just kept coming. Finally, after the fifteenth round had punched a hole through it, the creature fell to the deck, unmoving.

No one even twitched for a long minute after the Reaver was killed, until finally the _bzzt_ of the intercom broke the stunned silence. "_We all here? What's going on? Hello?"_

Zoë stepped on over to the pickup to reply. "No casualties. Anybody following?"

"_Nice flying, baby, and that's a negative. Clean getaway; out of atmo in six minutes."_

Mal slipped his pistol back into its holster and walked over to join the first mate. "Set course for Beaumonde," he ordered, then turned to Zoë. "First thing, I want this bod-"

The sound of a footstep made him turn, just in time to meet Simon's fist with his jaw.

"You want a bullet?" the captain spat in Chinese, picking himself up off the floor for a second time. "You want a bullet right in the _throat_?"

Simon glared at him. "You stupid, selfish son of a whore!"

Mal felt anger run through him, leaving him alternately hot and cold. "I'm a hair's breadth from riddling you with holes, Doctor," he hissed.

The Doc didn't get the message that he was seriously starting to tick Mal off. "'One simple job,'" he mocked, quoting the captain. "'She'll be fine!'"

"She _is_ fine. Except for bein' still crazy, she's the picture of health." Simon looked like he was about to try to slug him again, but Zoë interceded.

"Wasn't for River, we'd probably be left there," she said quietly. "She felt 'em coming."

Simon's jaw clenched. "Never again. You understand me?"

Mal's eyes narrowed, and he took a step closer to the other man. "Seems I remember a talk about you giving on my boat."

"Well, sleep easy, 'cause we're _off_ your boat! Just as soon as River gets her share of the bounty." Mal took a closer look at the kid. He'd seen the Doc irritated, annoyed, and even aggravated before, usually by himself, but he'd never before seen the man truly angry like he was now.

Standing as witness to their argument, Kaylee looked dismayed. "Well, let's not do anything hasty," she said quickly.

But the idea was growing on Mal. "No, shiny. I'm sick'a carrying tourists anyhow. We'll be on Beaumonde in ten hours' time, you can pick up your earnings and be on your merry. Meantime, you do your job," he said, gesturing towards Jayne, who was almost cheerfully ignoring the pain the Reaver harpoon through his leg had caused. "Patch up my crew."

"He didn't lie down."

Everyone looked towards River at the sound of her voice. She was staring at the downed Reaver, her face sad, and Mal blinked when he realized she was holding Harry in front of her, her arms wrapped around his waist and clenched at his stomach.

Well, crap. He'd forgotten Harry would be going with the Doc and his sister… Mal ruthlessly suppressed the dismay that threatened to well up. Yeah, he'd miss the kid, but keeping him just wasn't worth having the other two on board.

Harry wrapped his hand around River's, but for the life of him Mal couldn't tell just which of them was comforting the other. The boy shook his head and answered her.

"They never lie down."

* * *

A/N: First of all, River is the only psychic in this story. Harry is only what he's ever been, a wizard. Second… smacks everyone who thought this was an AU of the HP books. I wrote in a previous author's note that this was canon through the fifth or sixth book… And no, that's not impossible.

Oh, there's a very important line in here that hints at a future bit. Can you guess which it is?

Hugs to reviewers! (and band-aids to those I smacked)

* * *

10 February 2006


	4. A Despondent Separation

**Warnings and Disclaimers:** It might be more fun writing things without having to refer to a book every five seconds, but the chapters sure come out faster when you do…

* * *

Mal stopped in the corridor, one hand against the bulkhead. "You think I did wrong?" he asked the woman he knew was following him, just like she always did.

"No," Zoë answered quietly. "I think things'll glide a deal smoother for us without River and Simon on board. But how long do you think _they'll_ last? Let alone with having to take care of a child like Harry?"

The captain was glad he was facing away from her; that way, she couldn't see the flinch her words caused, because the answer was 'about as long as spit on the sun.' "Doc made his call," he said, and it sounded like an excuse even to him. "They's as babes in a basket when we took 'em in. We sheltered 'em plenty. Man has to cut loose, learn to stand on his own." Not that the Doc would be able to, the way he clung to his Core ways even out here on the Rim.

They were walking again by now, and it wasn't until they'd reached the entrance to Mal's quarters that Zoë got to what was obviously on her mind. "Like that man back in town?"

Mal froze, the man's despairing face as he was pushed from the side of the mule and caught by the Reavers flashing through his mind. "I had to shoot him. What the Reavers woulda done to him before they killed him…" And that would've been a long time in coming, indeed. Being eaten alive took longer to kill someone than you'd think possible.

"I know. That was a piece'a mercy. But before that, him begging us to bring him along."

He had to look away. "We couldn't take the weight. Would slowed us down." And then _none_ of them would be here…

Brown eyes looked at him, carefully blanked of all expression. "You know that for certain."

"Mule won't run with five. I shoulda dumped the girl? Or you? Or Jayne?" Mal had to stop and reconsider that last one. "Well, Jayne…" If the mercenary wasn't so damn useful, Mal would've put a bullet into him long ago just on account that Jayne's loyalty went to whoever held the pocketbook and supplied him with his beloved violence. The viper at the breast that would turn when offered a larger rat.

Zoë didn't smile; not that he'd really expected her to, but after so many years of reading her subtle expressions, he could tell she wasn't at all amused. "Coulda tossed the payload."

Mal hadn't wanted to think about that, hadn't wanted contemplate the fact he'd found cash to be more important than a stranger's life. "And go to Fanty and Mingo with air in our mitts, tell 'em, 'Here's your share'? They'd set the dogs on us in the space of a twitch, and there we are back in mortal peril. We get a job, we gotta make good."

All of which was true, and very logical, but saying it still made him feel like shit.

"Sir, I don't disagree on any particular point, it's just…" Uncharacteristically, Zoë hesitated. "In the time of war, we woulda never left a man stranded."

His chest aching with the memories her words brought up, Mal pushed open the door to his quarters and stepped inside. "Maybe that's why we lost," was his reply, before the door slid shut, ending the conversation.

-

"I do not get it. How's a guy get so wrong?"

Kaylee blinked and looked over at the last person she would have expected to utter those words. Jayne was dragging the corpse of the Reaver over to the airlock, looking absolutely disgusted even though she knew it wasn't the first body he'd ever had to move.

"Ain't logical," the big man continued as she pushed the button to open the inner door. "Cuttin' on his own face, rapin' and murdering- I mean, I'll kill a man in a fair fight. Or if I think he's gonna _start_ a fair fight. Or if he bothers me. Or if there's a woman. Or I'm getting' paid." By now Kaylee was rolling her eyes, and he saw her expression and grinned.

"Mostly only when I'm getting' paid," he admitted. "But these Reavers- last ten years, they just show up like the bogeymen from stories. Eating people alive? Where does that get fun?"

Kaylee had to shrug. "Shepherd Book said they was men that reached the edge of space, saw a vast nothingness, and just went bibbledy over it."

"Well, I been to the edge."

It was all she could do to suppress a comment that would've done the Cap'n proud for pure snarkiness. "That explains so much," maybe, or "His point made exactly."

But she prided herself on being a nice girl, and so she kept her mouth shut and depressurized the crawlspace.

"Just looked like more space," Jayne added after a moment.

"I don't know. People get awful lonely in the black. Like to get addlepated ourselves, we stay on this boat much longer. Captain'll drive us all off, one by one."

The mercenary snorted. "You're just in a whinge 'cause that prissy doc is finally disembarking. Me, I say good riddance." He ignored the way Kaylee turned and glared at him. "He never belonged here, his sister's no saner than one of them Reavers, and the Doc's pet is good for nothin' but looking cute and nearly blowin' people up!"

Kaylee mimicked his snort. "Woulda thought that'd put him right dear in your heart. And River's a dear heart and a boon to this crew. You just don't like her 'cause she can read your mind and everything you think is mean!"

The man just shrugged. "Well, there is that."

"They could have a place here, all three of them. They _did_ have a place. Now they're leaving us, just like Shepherd Book." She looked up at one of the shuttles, dark and dusty with disuse. "Just like Inara…"

-

"Don't talk to the barkers," Kaylee instructed Simon a few hours later, standing with him on _Serenity_'s ramp. "Only to the captains. You look the captain in the eye, know who you're dealing with."

River only listened to their conversation with a little tiny bit of her attention. The rest was spent on the seemingly endless task of straightening her little feather's hair, endless because whenever she put a lock of the dark strands in one place, another one would fall into disorder. She continued at her self-appointed task, though, her enormous intellect struggling with the problem. Surely there was some mathematical formula to explain the sheer messiness?

Harry bore her attentions with his customary stoic patience, though to one who knew him as closely as the psychic did, he was enjoying them. He leaned into her touch ever so slightly.

"I wish there was-" Simon began wistfully, then faltered. River scowled, her face safely turned away so they wouldn't see. Stupid brother. He paid so much attention to the little things he forgot how to deal with the important ones…

Like telling the girl he loved her already! But no, he had to be so _dense_ all the time…

Captain Reynolds passed by the two in studied ignorance, but paused by her and Harry. He looked at the boy for a long moment, then reached out to him. River pouted as he ruined all of her hard work with a good tousling.

"You'll take care of him?" he asked, still not looking at her directly.

River nodded, even though he couldn't see. "I'll take care of him, until he takes care of us," she answered.

"Good luck," he muttered diffidently. Harry gave him a wan smile, his eyes focused somewhere over the captain's shoulder.

"You shouldn't oughtta be so clean," Kaylee babbled on as he moved away to the pilot and his wife waiting at the bottom of the ramp. "It's a dead giveaway you don't belong, you always gotta be tidy."

River frowned as she wrestled with a particularly stubborn bit of hair, trying to fix the damage. The mechanic was practically pouring out her feelings on the ground there in front of his feet, and all Simon was doing was standing there. He ought to be sweeping her off her feet for a good-bye kiss, like in all those romance flicks she'd watched with Kaylee and Inara.

Stupid, stupid brother…

Kaylee had yet to wind down. "Don't pay anybody in advance. And don't ride in anything with a Capissen-38 engine, they fall right out of the sky."

"Kaylee." River waited breathlessly for Simon to continue. Maybe his wandering IQ points had finally come back to him…

But no- despite the longing in his voice, he didn't stop the girl when she went to rejoin the rest of her crewmates. He came over to them instead, ignoring the disgusted look River sent his way.

"River, do you want to stay with them?" he asked quietly. He sounded more like he wanted to convince himself this was the right past, than to hear her opinion.

River pulled Harry closer to herself. "It's not safe," she muttered into the top of his head.

Simon sighed. "No, I fear it's not safe anymore."

The teenager rolled her eyes, letting the boy loose and taking him by the hand instead. "For them," she added, but if Simon heard her, he showed no sign of it.

-

The bar was about as crowded as Mal had expected; the Maidenhead's beer wasn't that great, but those who operated just on, and sometimes over, the edge of the law loved the place. They left their weapons in the gun check, a pistol each from Mal, Zoë, Wash, and Jayne, though it had taken a great deal of arguing and orders to make the last bring only one.

Mal was fair glad Kaylee made it a point not to carry a weapon. The way she was glaring at him and ranting over the doctor's departure, he wasn't so sure she wouldn't have shot him with it.

"You know how much I pined on Simon. And him fair sweet on me, I well believe, but he's so worried about being found out…"

"Captain didn't make them fugitives," Zoë interjected. Mal was glad, because he didn't want to have to justify himself yet again right now, not when the cons of sending the trio off were starting to yell in his ear just as loudly as the pros.

Kaylee pouted. "But he coulda made 'em family, 'steada driving them off. 'Steada keeping Simon from seein' I was there, when I carried such a torch and we coulda… Goin' on a year now I ain't had nothing twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries."

Mal choked. "Oh, God, I ain't supposed to know that!"

"I could stand to hear a little more," Jayne volunteered, raising his hand with a grin. Zoë sent him a glare, but Kaylee didn't react.

"If you had a care for anybody's heart, you woulda-"

That was _enough_! Mal turned on her, his eyes flashing with anger. "You knew he was gonna leave! We never been but but a way station to those two." It felt wrong, somehow, to include Harry in that. The kid hadn't had a say in what happened to him since the Alliance had gotten its greedy mitts on him. "And how do you know what he feels? He's got River an' Harry to worry on, but he still coulda shown you- If I truly wanted someone bad enough, wouldn't be a thing in the 'verse could stop me from going to her."

The girl's face was serious, now, as she looked him in the eye. "Tell that to Inara."

She left, then, while Mal was still reeling. "Domestic troubles?" a smooth voice asked from behind.

When the captain turned, he found Fanty and Mingo standing there. "'Cause we don't wanna interrupt," Mingo added to his twin brother's comment.

Fanty nodded. "A man should keep his house in order."

Mal looked between them, being careful not to show his dismay at being snuck up on. "Mingo. Fanty," he acknowledged.

Mingo pointed at his brother. "_He's_ Mingo."

The captain smirked. Did they really think they were fooling anyone? "He's Fanty. You're Mingo."

"Gah!" Mingo scowled at him. "How is it you always know?"

"Fanty's prettier." Not really, but a magician never revealed his secrets. "Feel to do some business?"

"Bit crowded, innit? As you see, we come unencumbered by thugs," Mingo pointed out, casting a leery eye over his crewmates.

Mal snorted. "Which means at least four of the guys already in here are yours. All's one. I'll just keep Jayne with me."

Zoe frowned. "Sir, are you sure you don't-"

"Go." Being good for when trouble came 'round was the entire reason he kept the man around. And at least with him nearby Mal could keep an eye on him. "Get yourselves a nice romantic meal."

Wash grinned, circling wife's waist with an arm. "Those are two of my favorite words!" Zoë gave him a look. "Honey? 'Meal'?"

They wandered off, hand in hand, and Fanty tossed a few coins to a dancer, who snapped out her fans. Studying her for a few seconds, Mal realized the positions of her fans were carefully calculated to block their table from view of the Alliances ubiquitous cameras.

Underneath the table, Mal carefully slid over the duffel containing the twins' share of the results of the heist. It hit Fanty's foot, but the man didn't even blink. "Quite a crew you've got."

"Yeah," Mal agreed warily. "They're a fine bunch of reubens."

"How you keep them on that crap boat is a subject of much musing 'tween me and Fanty."

"We go on and on," the other one added.

Warning bells were slowly starting to register in Mal's mind. "So I'm noticing. Is there a problem I don't know of? You got twenty-five percent of a sweet take kissing your foot, how come we're not dispersing?"

Fanty smiled a shark's smile. "Our end is forty, precious."

Jayne reached for his absent gun, his face darkening. "My muscular buttocks it's forty!"

If the situation hadn't been so suddenly tense, Mal would have winced at that. What a lovely mental picture…

"It is as of now," Mingo said. "Find anyone around going cheaper."

Fanty nodded. "Find anyone around going near a sorry lot like you in the _first_ instance."

That was when Jayne nudged Mal, his attention taken by something near the entrance. The captain followed his gaze to see a slender figure slipping inside.

River?

...Oh, just effin' wonderful...

* * *

A/N: Sigh. More quotes, but to be honest things don't _really_ diverge until the end… Going on a hunting trip for the next five days or so, and it would be very very nice if there was a nice pile of reviews and updates waiting for me when I return to civilization… puppy eyes

And you still. Don't. Get it! _The Harry Potter books have already happened!_

16 February 2006


	5. A Violent Encounter

**Warnings and Disclaimers:** Violence. Lots of violence. But then, you were looking forward to that, weren't you?

* * *

A bare moment later Mal saw another, smaller shadow come forward to grasp the girl by the hand. The lighting in the bar wasn't the greatest, but even so he could have spotted Harry's mess of hair from a mile away. Not many already inside noticed them, except for a few men who shot appraising looks at the young woman. And a couple at Harry, he saw with disgusted anger.

Mal turned his eyes towards the entrance, then, and waited. Gorram it, where the hell was the Doc? If that little shit had let those two wander off on their lonesome in a bad place like this, he was going to...

He didn't have time to think of an appropriate threat, though, because Fanty was rambling on, thinking he still had his guest's full attention. "You're unpredictable , Mal, which is the single worst thing to be in this business. Mingo and me, we're greedy. Could set your watch by our greed. It wavers never. But you, you run when you oughta fight, fight when you oughta deal. Makes a businessperson twitchy."

Mingo nodded agreement. "Adding in the fact that your ship's older than the starting point of time and you can see you's charity cases to the likes of us."

A suspicion was beginning to work its way up Mal's spine. "Well, here's a foul thought," he mused out loud. "I conjured you two were incompetent. Sent us out not knowing there were Reavers about. Now I'm thinking you picked us out because you _did_."

To his outrage, Mingo just shrugged. "That were a sign of faith, boy. And it doesn't affect our forty per. Danger is, after all, your business."

Jayne looked about to start tearing throats out, with his bare hands if need be. "Reavers ain't business, double dickless."

Trying to push down his anger- what he needed right now was a clear head- Mal turned a bit to check on the children again. They'd picked their way through the Maidenhead to stand before the big CorVue screen that dominated that side of the room. There was an ad showing at the moment, a bumbling little number about Fruity Oaty Bars that had made Mal's teeth grind the _first_ time he'd seen it, a couple of months ago. River was staring up at the bright, oscillating colors with such a rapture he had a feeling the bar could be pulled down around her ears and she wouldn't notice.

All of a sudden, though, the girl seemed to tense. She said something, then; Mal saw her lips move, forming a single word. Beside her, Harry flinched and opened his mouth. What happened then could only be described as all hell breaking loose.

As River moved with a sinister grace towards the nearest table, occupied by two men and their drinks, Harry screamed, and every screen and light in the room exploded all at once in a shower of sparks.

Mal would always remember the next few minutes as flashes of light and darkness as the destroyed electronics sparked erratically. He was up out of his seat before the shards of plastic hit the ground, Jayne beside him, as shouts of confusion filled the pitch-black bar. They could hear crashing sounds and cries of pain mixed in there, too, all overshadowed by Harry's continuing screams, a wail of grief and anger that made Mal's gut clench in response.

"What the hell's goin' on?" the big mercenary shouted through the darkness. Then there was a brief shower of sparks, and his question was answered.

Two men were closing on either side of River, who was near surrounded by bodies. They each had a knife and looked capable of using them, but the girl didn't turn and run like any sane person would've. Instead, as they lunged with blades outstretched she fell into a graceful split, reaching over her head to grasp their wrists and pull until they'd stabbed each other.

The sparks winked out, and they were plunged back into a decidedly noisy darkness.

The next flash was of River using the bouncer's own shockrod against him. Then a few moments later she was kicking around a corner and connecting with a running man's face. It was only when the sparks had ended after that one that Mal realized she couldn't possibly have seen the poor bastard before lashing out.

Then Jayne was gone from his side, and in a longer waterfall of sparks the stunned Mal watched him approach and grab River from behind. "Gorrammit, girl, it's _me_!"

The blackness was back before the captain could see what her reaction to that was, but he could make a pretty good guess of it from Jayne's subsequent shouts of pain. Mal started groping his way towards the gun holder as the shock began to wear off. With the girl gone this crazy and this good at tussling- and where the hell had _that_ come from- he had a horrible feeling the only way he was going to be able to stop her was with a bullet.

Then Harry's wail was abruptly cut off, and Mal glanced towards the last place he'd seen the boy, worried. He waited impatiently for light to appear, however briefly, and almost growled when it finally did. One of the men River had injured had managed to crawl a bit towards the exit and escape from the deathtrap the bar had suddenly become, before collapsing. Unfortunately, he'd collapsed on top of Harry.

Mal cursed under his breath. The man was more than big enough to crush the boy, still fragile from the Alliance's tender ministrations. He hesitated for a second, casting a longing look at the gun holder, and then shook his head. Harry didn't have that much time, and Jayne was tough. He was used to violence.

Though not so used to being beaten up by an underweight, seventeen-year-old girl, he'd bet.

Mal fumbled his way over to the area, his progress hampered by the dark. After a moment of searching his outstretched hands met rustling cloth, and he grabbed onto the unconscious man's jacket. A quick, forceful heave later, Harry was free, and before Mal could blink he felt the boy hit his chest like a speeding bullet.

"Shh," he murmured to the silent, shaking twelve-year-old. "It's all right…" It wasn't, really, and he doubted Harry could hear him over the continuing din, but he needed to at least try to reassure him.

There was suddenly light again, light that didn't fade after a brief second, though it was still a fairly dim one. Mal looked up to see the clothes of one of the men on the floor, hopefully an already dead man, had caught fire.

He could see more than flashes of the fight now. River had evidently finally gotten tired of playing with Jayne, and the merc was a groaning heap in the middle of a smashed table. Even as Mal watched, someone who had managed to sneak a gun past the bouncer pulled it out and took aim at the girl.

His elbow was broken with a sickening 'crack!', and turned in a direction it wasn't meant to go in until the weapon was pointed at the man's own stomach. He squeezed the trigger in what must have been a pain-driven reflex, and as he collapsed River relieved him of the gun with a quick vertical kick. She spun then to drop a charging patron, and Mal _knew_ the instant she saw him cradling Harry, because for the first time since the fight had started he saw an actual expression upon her face:

Anger.

River reached out an arm behind her, catching the gun with a daunting negligence. As the muzzle came up, pointed at the sweet spot just between his eyes, Mal knew with all certainty that, after surviving Serenity Valley, Reavers, countless raids and the members of his crew, he was about to die at the hands of a pubescent girl. He could swear time slowed down to just a trickle, as her finger tightened on the trigger.

"_Eta kooram nah smech!"_

River folded almost gracefully to the ground, and against his chest Harry had gone worryingly still. Mal stared at the gun for nearly a minute, lying harmlessly on the ground bare centimeters from the girl's fingertips, before raising his gaze to see a very pale Simon Tam standing at the entrance stairs.

-

Twenty-four hours ago, Mal would have felt guilty about chaining a child to a wall and dumping her into storage locker. But then, twenty-four hours ago Mal hadn't seen River tear through a bar of the Rim's toughest without breaking a sweat.

"May I see her?" was the first thing the Doc asked when the captain walked into _Serenity_'s dining room.

"She's still napping just now," Mal replied coldly. He directed a glance towards Kaylee, who shook her head. She was holding the still nearly-comatose Harry in her lap, upright to make sure he didn't simply stop breathing. The sleep he'd fallen into at the unusual phrase was far deeper than River's peaceful slumber, and for obvious reasons, Mal was reluctant to let Tam examine him to find out why. Speaking of which… "And I believe you've got some storytelling to do."

Wash tapped almost timidly on the doorframe. "Uh, we're out of atom," he said as all eyes turned towards him. "Shouldn't be too long to Haven, and the scanners aren't picking up anyone following."

Kaylee's smile almost, but not quite, erased the worry in her eyes. "Haven? We're going to see Shepherd Book?"

Mal gave her a nod. "Figure after that little performance back there lyin' low would be a good thing. 'Least until we see what the Alliance's response will be." He looked hard at the Doc. "Now, what the _hell_ happened back there?"

"Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a ninety-pound girl," Wash said with a grin, sitting down next to his wife at the table. "'Cause I don't think that's _ever _getting old."

Jayne, who had been sitting pointedly across the room from Tam, looked up from prodding his bruises and glared daggers at the pilot. Irritated by the delay, Mal slashed his hand through the air. "Enough! Now, doctor, _if you would_."

Simon's face was as composed as ever, though faint lines of worry traced his forehead. "Where would you like me to start?"

Oh, just about anywhere would be nice. Anything that help to straighten out this tangle and let Mal know just what kind of mess his ship had landed in. "That gobbledygook you spouted that put the kiddies to sleep."

The doctor took a deep breath. "A safeword. _Eta_ _kooram nah smech_. The people in the underground who helped me break River out, they had intel on just what the Alliance was doing to the people in those labs. Part of that was imbedding the subjects with words and phrases that caused certain automatic reactions. They taught it to me in case something happened. I hadn't realized Harry had received the same behavioral modifications."

Mal focused in on one particular bit of that. "'In case something happened'," he repeated slowly. Tam gave him an uncertain look. "Care to elaborate on what that 'something' might be?"

"They never said just what-"

"Did you even _ask_?" Mal slammed his hands down on the table. "Eight months! Eight months she's been on my ship, and _not once_ did you ever say she might go monkeyshit on us if we said the wrong word! _My_ ship. My _crew_! Did you ever once think of them? What would've happened if she'd gone off in the middle of dinner, or in bunk with Kaylee?"

That was the first thing he'd said that appeared to make an impression on the man, who paled and flickered a glance at the mechanic. Kaylee didn't meet his eyes, her arms wrapped around the sleeping boy in her lap. "I…I thought she was getting better," Simon offered, his voice not nearly as confident as it had been at the start of the interrogation.

"An' I thought they was gettin' _off_!" Everyone looked up at Jayne's outburst. "Didn't we have an intricate plan how they was gonna not be here anymore?"

Kaylee frowned at him. "We couldn't leave 'em _now_!"

"An' why not? What, we're supposed to be bringin' 'em tea and dumplings now that the girly's a, a killer woman?"

Part of Mal agreed wholeheartedly with Jayne. It jumped up and down at the back of his mind, shouting at the top of its lungs to go as fast and as far from Beaumonde as _Serenity_'s engines could take her, with the Doc and his wards eating dust planetside. But…

But. Mal would sleep a lot easier if he could only figure out that 'but.' Was this what Fanty and Mingo had meant by his unpredictability?

"May I see her?" Simon asked again when the silence had stretched on. This time the captain nodded, and the Coreworlder rose and vanished into the bowels of the ship.

Jayne scowled as Mal sat down at the table, suddenly bone-weary. "She goes wooly again, we're gonna have to put a bullet in her."

"The thought's crossed my mind," Mal admitted. His eyes and thoughts had drifted back to Harry, though. There was something about the boy, something about that fiasco at the Maidenhead that was tugging at him, but he was damned if he could pull it up out of his subconscious.

Wash coughed and raised his hand, further enforcing the image Mal had always had of him as an eager schoolboy. "Can I make a suggestion that doesn't involve violence? Or is this the wrong crowd?"

Mal raised an interested eyebrow and waved him on. Right now, something without violence that didn't involve the good doctor sounded rather good.

"Fanty and Mingo might be coming down hard on us, or the laws, or maybe nobody could be bunged about our little social brawl. We need to get our bearings."

He paused, and Mal had a feeling he wasn't really going to like this suggestion after all.

"I think we need to talk to Mr. Universe."

* * *

A/N: Slowly, slowly moving away from canon… Even paraphrasing some of the dialogue now. For those of you wondering just how close/different things will be, the major points of the movie will happen. They'll see Mr. Universe, go to Haven, take that little trip to Miranda… which is where things explode and some gets explained, by the way… but the actual content of the story will be a bit different.

And for those wondering about my sudden fixation on this story, I have chapters started on _Strains of Melody_ and _Storm Child_. Can't guarantee how quickly work will proceed, though.

* * *

23 February 2006


	6. A Worrisome Enlightenment

**Warnings and Disclaimers:** Finally got away from quoting so damn much… Hope I managed to keep them in character, though.

* * *

The man wore a gentle smile as he watched the security feed. He still smiled as the girl appeared at the top of the stairs and was joined by her little anchor. He was still smiling as Tam approached the CorVue screen, and the subliminal command inserted into the commercial was broadcasted.

It was only after Tam began her rampage, when her anchor screamed and the screen went to static as the feed was destroyed, that the operative finally frowned. The ensign stationed at the screen near him cringed at the expression, keeping as he was a nervous eye on his superior.

But the operative only leaned forward and rewound the feed, his swarthy face puzzled. Something about the picture was off, and that _wrongness_ twitched at his attention.

He watched it through again, rewound it, and keyed the speed down until it was going at a snail's pace. The command was sent out… Tam shrugged off her coat… M12-31 opened his mouth and screamed.

Static filled the screen.

"Ensign," the operative said softly, but even so the young man- barely more than a boy- jerked to attention.

"Sir?"

"I want you to analyze this," the operative ordered, isolating the tiny fraction of the feed that contained the anchor's vocalizations. "Break it down as far as you can, and tell me if there's anything at all unusual about it."

The ensign bobbed his head eagerly. "Yes, sir. Right away!" True to his word, he bent over the console, his stylus tapping eagerly away.

The operative didn't have long to wait. "Sir," the ensign said after only a few minutes, "I'm starting to see a very strange wave pattern-"

He was interrupted as his console suddenly exploded in a dazzling light show of sparking electronics. The operative tackled him out of the way of the burning shower in a move almost too fast to see. "Stay down!" he ordered, covering his head with his hands to ward off any stray sparks.

It was only when it finally ended that he let the boy up, studying the ruined console with narrowed, speculative eyes. "How very interesting," he murmured to himself.

"S-sir?" the ensign stammered, his eyes wide and shocked.

The operative glanced at him briefly. "Are you hurt, child?"

The ensign shook his head, still dazed.

"Good. Now tell me, before I gave you that order, what had you found on the man carrying out the girl?" the man commanded eagerly, standing up and brushing himself off.

The ensign stumbled to his feet as well, and then over to the operative's own console at his impatient gesture. "We… we made a positive match on his retinal patterns." He tapped the screen a few times with the stylus, until it split, one side still showing the frozen feed of the two children, and the other filling with a man's picture and bio.

"Captain Malcolm Reynolds, of a transport vessel, class Firefly," the ensign read off. "He has a record, five times bound by law, for smuggling and tariff dodging. Never convicted. Nothing that unusual, for a ship captain out here on the Rim…"

"Yes, there is," the operative corrected quietly, his eyes reading one line of text. "The name of the ship. Cross reference 'Malcolm Reynolds' with 'Serenity.'"

The ensign did as ordered, and a wry smile passed across the operative's lips at the result. Serenity Valley. The bloodiest battle of the entire rebellion begun by the misguided Rim worlds. The so-called Independents had held the valley for seven weeks, two of them after the official surrender of their commanders, despite enduring a casualty rate of sixty-eight percent. And according to their records, Reynolds had been a sergeant, and the highest-ranking survivor of his company…

"This man will be an issue," the operative murmured. "He hates us, hates everything we stand for. He will do his best to prevent our mission…"

He smiled reassuringly at the confused ensign. "And his crew?" He studied the results intently. A second mate who'd served with Reynolds at Serenity Valley; her pilot husband, by the shared last names; a civilian mechanic; a merc.

"Give me a list of all passengers within the last two years," he ordered. Reynolds was a man of passion. He would have a very obvious weakness, one that could be used to neatly draw him out of hiding, he was sure of it. And after a bit of searching, he found it.

A woman's face filled the screen. She was a very beautiful woman, with large almond-shaped eyes, a straight nose, full lips, and tumbling dark hair. Not that she could have been anything but beautiful, because she was registered as a Companion. The operative glanced at her current location, and then strode to the intercom. "Captain," he said into it, "change course, on this heading…"

His instructions given, the operative returned to watching the frozen feed, ignoring the ensign. "Where are you hiding, little girl?" he murmured out loud. His eyes traveled downwards, to her tiny anchor.

"And what are _you_ hiding?"

-

The sensors told of an atmosphere with so many trace toxins not even the Alliance, with its voracious appetite, wanted it. Not that it was, of course. Initially the moon had been hostile to the extreme to human life, but the terraforming hadn't failed as the sensors reported it had.

No, Mr. Universe simply he decided he wanted a nice quiet place to live, and hacked the sensors until they said what he wanted them to. Then he packed up all of his computer equipment and moved right on in. The moon was a tiny one, but it was still a hell of a lot of space for one man and his Love-bot, Mal reflected as he watched it from the cockpit.

The vidscreen signaled an incoming wave, and the captain switched it on as Wash and Zoë crowded in over his shoulder.

"And to what do I owe the scintillating pleasure of this visit, o Capitan?" the unkempt young man on the other end of the screen asked. There were bags under his eyes, but he twitched with the nervous energy of the overly caffeinated.

"Did something a mite newsworthy, thought you might have heard about it and could tell us more," Mal replied easily.

One of Mr. Universe's eyebrows crept upwards. "Oh? Haven't seen any flags on you and yours…"

A flicker of worry went through Mal. Mr. Universe constantly monitored Alliance and police channels, hoping to find something entertaining. There should have been at least _some_ interest in them from the local peacekeepers… That there wasn't said something Mal didn't understand, but didn't much care for, either. "Check for anything from a bar called the Maidenhead, on Beaumonde."

If the young mastermind twitched a bit at being ordered around, he didn't say anything about it. After a moment of typing, though, he frowned at Mal. "I take it whatever you did was what wiped out the cams?" he asked peevishly.

Mal nodded. "You found it, then."

"What little's there, yeah. Had to go direct to the security feed, though. There's nothing in the newsies or the lawforce channels." Mr. Universe tapped a bit, and looked off towards another of the screens that lined his walls.

"So there hasn't been any follow up?" Wash asked his old acquaintance.

"Nope. Not in the signal, and not in that puppet theater the Parliament's jesters put on and call 'news.'" He frowned thoughtfully at his screen. "I'm not the first person to access the feed, either. There're prints. Can't tell whose they are."

There was a collective blink from within _Serenity_'s cockpit. "Someone, somewhere, can do that?" Mal asked, startled. He hadn't thought it was possible for _anyone_ to block out Mr. Universe's probes.

The kid had stolen an entire moon from the Alliance with no one the wiser, after all.

Mr. Universe sent him an absent-minded scowl. "You can't stop the signal, but you can redirect it for a while. Don't worry, I'll find them. Nothing can hide from me for long." It was plain he'd taken the invisible trace as a challenge to his pride. "So, you wrecked the bar?" he asked, his attention caught again on the continually replaying feed.

Mal grimaced. "Not exactly. More like we tried to stay breathin' while the girl trashed the place."

"Oh?" Mr. Universe grinned, looking with new interest at River as she shrugged off her coat on screen. "Pity the cams were destroyed. That would have been some lovely violence."

Mal had to hold in a snort. Lovely if you hadn't been there and had a crazy seventeen-year-old point a gun at your head, maybe. "Can you reverse the feed?" he asked. "See if anyone talked to her afore she went apeshit, maybe set her off?"

The young man bit his lip. "No."

Mal blinked. "Um, please?"

But Mr. Universe was already typing, and directing his gaze towards a third, unseen screen. "You're a very smart man, Mal. Someone _is_ talking to her." The vidscreen split down the middle to show a short video being broken down into its code.

"The oaty bar's talking to her?" Wash asked incredulously.

But Mal was already one step ahead. "Subliminal. There's a damn subliminal message in there. Probably one of the code phrases like what the Doc used to put her to sleep."

Mr. Universe nodded. "Exactly. And I've been seeing this code pop up in all over, these last few weeks. Kind of surprised this is the first time you ran into it, really. But I can't crack it. It's Alliance and high military at that," he said in excuse at their expressions. "That means someone way up high is looking for your little girl, and judging from the way that feed was accessed, they've found her."

Zoë leaned in, then, focused on the feed. Mal was surprised; she'd been so quiet, he'd almost forgotten she was there. "What's she saying?" she wondered.

Mal frowned. "That's right, the girl said something just before the _gos_ _se_ hit the fan."

The young genius zoomed the feed in, until all they could see was River's face. He forced the audio pickups to their max, and this time as the feed played through they could all hear the single word she spoke:

"_Miranda…"

* * *

_

A/N: The crew's aware things are getting bad, and the bad guys are beginning to understand River isn't the only special child… Sorry 'bout the shortness, guys, but I got to a point where I could end the chapter with a barely-decent length and took the chance, since I can feel the first twinges of an incipient block and didn't want to make you wait even longer. I lost my original copy of the Serenity book, and picked up a better one, which is why something suddenly got done.

Hope the next one's out soon, though there's a lot coming up. Senior Prom, Graduation, college registration…

* * *

26 April 2006


	7. A Rude Awakening

_Warnings and Disclaimers:_ Finally, some diversion from canon!

* * *

Gently, Simon swabbed the wet cloth over his sister's face, cleaning off the blood left after the fight in the Maidenhead. She gave no indication she even realized he was there, instead staring fixedly at the ship's captain lounging against the doorframe. 

"You're afraid of me," she whispered, her eyes big and chillingly knowing.

Mal opened his mouth to refute that plainly false statement, but then she made a sudden movement, and instincts sent him back a step even though there was no way she could have done anything, bound as she was by her chains.

Okay, so maybe he was a little… cautious. That was all. No need to go slinging 'round words like 'afraid'.

River smiled, a stretching of her lips that had nothing to do with humor. "You should be. You all should be, should be afraid of me, afraid of what's coming… what I'll show you…" The smile fractured as tears began to spill down her cheeks.

"What's coming?" Mal demanded, stepping forward again. Simon turned to glare at him, and he softened his tone. "What are you going to show us?"

Her brother ran a hand through her hair, trying to comfort her. It had no affect on her distant gaze. "Dogs and ponies, in a circus, going round and round and round… So many fall, blades of grass, but they don't care, don't see it. I see it, I always see, I can't _not_ see! _They won't get up!_"

Simon pulled her into his embrace, murmuring soft nonsense words into her hair. "I don't know what I'm saying. I never know what I'm saying…" the girl whispered.

Mal cleared his throat, pushing away the sympathy that threatened to rise. She only _looked_ like a helpless little girl, and he had his crew to consider. "In the Maidenhead, you said something. Happen to remember what it was?"

River's head lifted. "Miranda."

The captain nodded. "Don't suppose you'd feel like enlightening us as to what the hell that signifies?"

She laughed, high and bitter. "It's all about Miranda. She'll show you, show you everything."

The two men exchanged a glance, frowning. "Miranda is a… person?" Simon asked, before a thought occurred to him. "Am I… am I talking to Miranda now?"

The look River turned upon him needed no words to translate. "I'm not a multiple, dumbo."

Smirking, Mal opened his mouth to comment and was interrupted by running footsteps coming down the corridor. "Cap'n!" Kaylee said, out of breath. "Harry's awake!"

Relief crashed through Mal, strong enough to be a surprise, and muscles relaxed he hadn't realized were tense. "Shiny. Zoë with him?" he asked, taking a step into the corridor.

She nodded, shooting Simon a tentative smile. "Yeah. They're in one of the passenger rooms. She's tryin' to get some broth down him, but it's not goin' too well." The mechanic hesitated. "He's… he's different, Cap'n."

He frowned again. "Better?"

"...I don't rightly know. Just… different." Kaylee vanished into the corridor. "Come an' see!" she called back.

"Coming, Doctor?" Mal asked in a tone that sounded remarkably like an order. The man was the only medically trained person on board, and the captain figured he could trust him to examine the kid if there was one of them standing behind him with a gun in hand.

'Sides, there was no gorram way Mal was leaving him alone with his sister.

The three of them walked between the crew quarters, only to meet Zoë as she nearly leaped up the stairs. "Did he go by here?" she snapped, her lips tight and pale.

Mal came to a stop and blinked at her. "Him… Harry? You saying you've lost him?"

The first mate's face went blanker than usual. "I turned around for a moment and he was gone," she replied, not making an excuse, but explaining the situation.

Mal swore luridly in Chinese. "Kaylee, check the engine room. Doc, the infirmary. Go with him, Zoë." No way in hell was the doctor going anywhere on his boat unescorted. "I'll check crew quarters and the bridge." Could Harry have gone to the bridge? It was his favorite place, but after all that had happened, could it really be that simple?

They split up as he'd ordered. Mal checked his room first and came up nothing, and then Kaylee's with a grimace for her unrelentingly cheerful decorations. A further search of Jayne's quarters (where Harry thankfully was not- that kid and access to Jayne's grenades definitely wasn't a good thing), and Wash and Zoë's shared revealed no twelve-year-old.

Mal stepped out into the corridor again wearing a worried frown. He'd hoped Harry would be in one of the rooms, because a little boy loose among heavy machinery or sharp objects like the Doc's scalpels didn't bear thinking about. And surely if he was in the cockpit, Wash would've said something over the intercom…

That was when he heard a quiet voice singing. He followed the sound, back to the storage locker that held River Tam, and had a sudden, sinking feeling.

And sure enough, when he opened the door, there was little Harry being rocked in the psycho girl's arms as she sang him a lullaby.

-

Mal was staring out at the black an hour later when Zoë came up next to him. "I'm sorry, sir," she said quietly, electing to stand rather than sit in the copilot's seat.

He didn't said anything, and had she been any other woman she would have fidgeted. "It won't happen again," she added.

There was another silence, this one longer. "You know, I just can't conjure it," Mal finally said, still looking out at the darkness broken only by a few unblinking stars.

"Conjure what?" his second-in-command asked, a shade of uneasiness in her voice.

"How in the 'verse the kid managed to get past us to the locker," Mal replied with a little shake of his head. "I mean, you were right behind him, and we were coming up from the other direction, so how could we not have seen him go past us?"

"Maybe he hid in one of the bunks."

"There wasn't time." Mal fell silent again for a minute. "That's not the only thing bugging me. There was something about that fight on Beaumonde. Something offish, but it's just not coming clear to me."

"If it's important, I'm sure it will." She stood there for a moment longer, before nodding to his reflection in the screen. "I'll be with my man if you need me." He nodded back, and then he was alone in the cockpit again.

Though, not for long. A sound only just on this side of audible made Mal turn his head to the side, and he found himself staring into green eyes.

"Harry!" he yelped, startled. "You're supposed to be with Kaylee-"

"I know you," the boy said quietly, and Mal abruptly stopped talking. Those were the same green eyes he'd come to know, but now that he looked closer… They'd always been just a little dull before, a little blank, with depths to them that put you in mind of space's vacuum. But now…

They were aware. And looking at him. And, miracles heaped upon miracles, _seeing_ him.

"…Yeah, you do," Mal at last managed to reply. "Been almost a year now, so we should pretty much know each other."

Harry quirked his head to the side, briefly reminding the captain of a curious puppy. "That's not so very long, if you think about it."

Mal was put in mind of all the times he'd felt like strangling the Doc. "Or it can be a lifetime."

A smile flitted over the boy's face. "True enough." He sank back into the copilot's seat, his movements slow and unhurried as though he were completing the action out of reflex. His eyes never left Mal's, and the ex-soldier was startled to see wariness in their depths. "So we know each other."

Mal nodded, putting his empty palms in plain sight. The attempt to reassure the boy seemed to work, since he relaxed just a little. "Name's Mal, since you don't seem to remember the introductions," he said dryly.

Again there was that quirk of the head. "Did you know your name means 'bad' in Latin?"

He winced. "So I've heard." The kid was definitely spending too much time with River. The way she'd been carping about that, he'd actually considered switching to a different name.

Harry wasn't looking at him anymore. "You shouldn't worry," he said, looking out at the black. "Bad doesn't always stay bad. Sometimes it switches to good. But then, good doesn't always stay good, either. Sometimes it goes bad, very bad, even if it thinks it's still good."

Mal listened as the boy's changed as he spoke, growing confidence and an ease it'd been lacking. He should've been glad Harry was relaxing around him, but something was setting off warning klaxons in his mind.

That was when Harry turned back to him, smiling sadly. "Don't you remember Professor Snape and Professor Umbridge, Ron? Severus saved me so many times, and Umbridge nearly killed us all. You can never know with people, you just can't."

Yeah, Harry could see now, alright.

It was just that what he was seeing had taken a sharp right turn from reality.

-

For so long, it had felt empty. Not empty in that there was nothing there, but in that what should have been there was gone, gone so far away he couldn't be reached. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Not at all. They weren't ever supposed to be apart, not until the final parting.

For the briefest time, minutes, hours, days earlier, it hadn't been. He'd been within reach again, though the connection had been so attenuated it hadn't been able to do more than stretch out and know it wasn't alone.

It gave it hope, even though the connection had soon dwindled, and it was alone again. But now it knew it wasn't forever. All it had to do was wait, because he was coming. He'd be there soon, though there would be some stops and turns along the way.

Soon or not, it would be far too long for comfort, as it had already been. It longed to simply fly to him, but the distance was yet too far. Soon, though. It had to remember. Soon.

With a mournful shudder, it made itself comfortable and began drifting off to sleep. It wasn't worried that another might find it, and try to hurt it, because there were no others. Not anymore. The buildings around him were empty, perfectly, austerely empty.

Just as it, so briefly, hadn't been. But the boy was coming, if it just waited.

And if it had to, it would wait for him for eternity.

* * *

A/N: stares at the last part Um. Late night writing makes for confusing POVs. Not that that's really surprising… First, I have no idea where to find the blueprints for Serenity, and am making do with Wikipedia's description. If anyone knows where to find some good ones, I would be much obliged if they'd let me know. 

Second, I'm sure you'll all be proud and amazed to discover that I referenced the book/movie precisely four times in this chapter. Even then, I twisted everything almost out of recognition. And it's _fun_ writing River! Finding alternate ways to say everything… I'm kind of glad I can't just copy out of the book for her, since she's not _quite_ as crazy as in the movie.

Oh, and as far as Eternity's concerned, HBP never happened. No bad-guy Snape, just evil-snarky-professor.

Hugs and cookies to everyone who reviewed.

* * *

13 June 2006


	8. A Quiet Stop

_Warnings and Disclaimers:_ A brief, partial reversion back to canon. Sorry folks, but there were some parts that I thought needed to be kept, if altered a little.

* * *

_What separates the sane from those  
__who_ _plumb the depths of the burdened soul,  
__trace_ _the wandering neural paths?  
__Where the edge, where the end  
__of_ _knowing,  
__and_ _where does intuition begin?  
__Ask as though there were a boundary,  
__as_ _thin as the line 'tween shade  
__and_ _effervescent light,  
__for_ _there is no difference.  
__Only a different view…_

_**-Recording retrieved from a corrupted data core in the ruins of the Academy after the terrorist attacks of 2520 A.D. Author unknown, but is according to analysts a young female.

* * *

**_

"_Again?_"

"I dunno how the little bugger got past me-" Jayne tried to defend himself, but Mal wasn't hearing a word of it.

The captain could feel his face turning a deep puce as he stormed past the mercenary. Not that he really needed to be in such a hurry; when Harry vanished, he always ended up in the same place. "This boat ain't that big! How the hell's he getting out of your sight?"

"I dunno!" Jayne said again, following along behind him. "I swear I don't take my eye offa him for more'n a second or two, and then he's gone! I'm tellin' you, it ain't natural!"

Mal growled to himself, stopping in front of the storage locker where River Tam was still chained up. Inside, two dark heads bent close together as their owners conducted a conversation in whispers too low for him to hear. He spun the wheel to open up the door, cutting off Harry in mid-whisper.

"You know, kid, I'm getting mighty curious as to just how you keep pulling this off," he drawled with a questioning tilt to his head. "It keeps happening, and I conjure I'll have to keep an eye on you myself."

Harry looked up at him. "I'd tell you, but I don't think you'd believe me." He mulled over that statement for a moment. "Yet."

"You sure 'bout that? I've seen some mighty strange things this past year." Mal watched as the boy considered again.

Harry shook his head. "There's more than one kind of strange," he said, rising up from his crouch. Jayne waved impatiently at him, and the boy gave the merc a tiny smile as he walked past him out of the locker.

His last words floated back to Mal's ears. "_And my kind of strange is _really _strange…"_

The captain frowned to himself, gazing out after them. "He's getting better," a quiet voice said, bringing him out of his barely-begun thoughts.

Mal glanced at River. "He seemed a lot better, right there," he said mildly. "Don't know precisely what he meant by all that, but it was right plain _he_ did."

The girl smiled sadly down at her shackles, tracing the edge of a cuff round and round with a fingertip. "Never trust a seeming. Seeming makes it seem like he's all in the now, but haven't you ever watched a feather in flight? It rises and falls on the wind, up and down, but this one hasn't yet touched ground…"

He crouched down to look her in the eyes, but was careful to keep out of her reach. "Sure that don't describe you? Some days you're saner than others, too. 'Cept for the last couple days, anyway."

River shook her head. "No, Harry's the feather!" She spread her arms out as far as the chains would allow, a beatific expression on her face.

"I am the leaf on the wind," she whispered. "Watch how I soar…"

Recognizing Wash's favorite phrase, Mal opened his mouth to ask just what she meant, but was interrupted as she dropped her arms and looked at him with serious eyes. "It won't be long now, before he's all the way better.

"Love him while you can…"

-

Despite Mr. Universe's dire warnings, the trip to Haven was uneventful. They set down just after daybreak, having seen neither hide nor hair nor deck plate of anyone trying to stop them.

Shepherd Book was waiting when they lowered _Serenity_'s ramp, his lined, dark face creased in a welcoming smile. "Captain Reynolds," he greeted, bowing his head.

Mal nodded back. "Shepherd. Been a while."

The preacher's smile widened. "Indeed it has." His eyes dropped to the smaller figure Mal was very firmly clasping the hand of. "Well now, you're looking much better than the last time I saw you, young man."

Harry tilted his head to the side, studying Book carefully. "…I think I remember you," he said slowly. "You read to me, didn't you?"

Shepherd Book blinked in surprise, even as Mal's lips tried to twist into a smile. For most of the time the shepherd had been on board, Harry's physical condition was such that the boy had been confined to his bunk; not that he had cared much, considering mentally he was in very nearly worse shape. Even though Harry was in something the Doc had called a 'waking coma', Book and Inara had taken it upon themselves to read to him in turns.

It was that choice that had led to their almost-friendship, far warmer than it might have been given the little respect Mal had for religion anymore.

Book nodded. "You and I went through quite a few books together, yes." His eyes met Mal's, a silent question in them. _Is he healed?_

The captain grimaced a little and made a little wavy motion with his hand, down at his side. _Somewhat_, it said, and a flickering sadness in Book's face told Mal he understood. "Since reintroductions seem to be in order, my name is Derrial Book," the older man said, stepping closer and reaching out a hand. "I am a shepherd, of the faithful."

Harry's hand tightened in his, and Mal looked down at the boy in surprise. He was watching the shepherd with wide, almost fearful green eyes. "Suffer not a witch to live…?" he whispered, his voice trailing off quizzically.

Shepherd Book's eyebrows went up. "Er… no, my faith is rather more of the 'live and let live' kind. I can't say I've ever met a witch, either."

Harry hesitated for a moment longer, but finally stepped forward to put his free hand in the much larger shepherd's. "That's okay," he said sadly. "The witches are all gone, anyway."

The two men shared a startled, not to mention confused look, one interrupted only by Kaylee's delighted cry. "Shepherd!" she shouted, bounding down the ramp to nearly tackle Shepherd Book with an enthusiastic hug. The rest of the crew appeared at the top of the ramp behind her, for the most part wearing smiles of their own.

-

"Now, _do_-si-do and around we go," Kaylee chanted, leading Harry around the patch of stamped dirt that served the camp as a dance floor. Jayne was plucking out a tune for them on an ancient guitar one of the miners had lent him, while Zoë and Wash clapped to keep time.

Watching them, Mal couldn't help but grin fondly as he climbed the little hill with a bowl and chopsticks in hand. What he'd told Fanty and Mingo was true, his crew really was a bunch of fine ruebens, no matter how often he was tempted to strangle, shoot, or otherwise maim one of them. He couldn't imagine heading out to the black without a single one of them.

Well, maybe the Doc, little piece of _go se_ he could be at times.

"Lord, I am walking your way," he heard as he approached the hilltop, a quiet murmur carried on the breeze. "Let me in, for my feet are sore, my clothes are ragged. Look in my eyes, Lord, and my sins will play out on them as on a screen. Read them all."

Mal walked over next to the seated preacher, silently leaning against a boulder as he waited for the man to finish. "Forgive what you can, and send me on my path. I will walk on, until you bid me rest."

"Hope that wasn't for me, Shepherd," Mal said as Book opened his eyes.

Shepherd Book smiled sadly to himself, pulling a cigar from a pocket and lighting it. "It was a prayer for the dead, and for the lost."

"Well, I ain't the first, and I don't really see myself as the second," Mal mused half to himself. "…Harry?"

"Partially," the shepherd said, bowing his head. "And partially for the men River may have killed in that bar."

Mal scowled down at his food. "That weren't River's fault. It was their's that did that to her, fenced off her mind and made it their own without so much as a 'please'."

Book eyed his bent head contemplatively. "You got a plan?"

"What, hiding ain't a plan?"

"A short-term one, perhaps. But for longer than that?" He shook his head. "You're not one to stay in one place forever, Mal. You act."

Mal had to snort softly. "Run when I ought to fight, fight when I ought to deal," he muttered to himself. "If I had any kind of sense at all, I'd drop the two of 'em off on Londinium and hightail it towards regions as uninhabited as can be."

The shepherd smiled wryly. "Perhaps."

There was a short silence. "The Alliance military will be coming," Mal finally said. "I keep expecting to hear their pounding feet any minute now."

Book took one last drag from his cigar and pinched it out, tucking it into his pocket for later. "No, I don't expect they will," he said thoughtfully. "Not the way you're expecting, leastwise."

Mal threw him a sharp look. "And just what do you mean by that? I gotta say, I'm getting really tired lately of cryptic _go se_."

"There's no sign of this on the wave, remember?" Book reminded him. "No news bulletins. No public sign of any interest in you whatsoever. That's not how the military works. This… this is quiet. The Closed File kind of quiet. That means an Operative, which means you're in far deeper than you think."

Mal could practically hear the capital letters on those words. "Oh, my estimate's getting deeper by the minute." He set his chopsticks in his bowl, feeling a sudden lack of appetite. "I coulda left her there. I had an out. Hell, I had every reason in the 'verse to leave her lay and haul anchor."

The shepherd nodded a little. "Likely you did. But that's not your way, Mal. No matter how much you try to pretend it is." He rose and started to walk away, only to stop and turn back towards Mal after a few feet. "Remember, Captain. There won't be any kind of frontal assault like what you're expecting. This kind of thing doesn't work like that.

"Operatives are trained to come at things sideways, something you're not terribly good at. He'll sidle up to you, smile until you start to see his way of the 'verse, and then hit you where you're weakest." His dark eyes were hard on Mal, shrouded in the night. "And perhaps worst of all, he'll believe with all his soul that what he is doing is right. You won't be able to bargain with him. All you can do is fight- or give in."

Mal stared back at him, feeling a little shivery in spite of himself. "It's of interest to me just how much you seem to know about what's coming down on us."

Shepherd Book smiled sadly. "I wasn't born a shepherd, Mal. I came to it late."

The captain nodded slowly, uneasily. "You'll have to tell me about that sometime."

The other man looked away into the darkness, and then back. "No, I don't," he said with a note of finality in his voice. He turned again to walk back to camp.

"Remember, Mal. Sideways."

* * *

A/N: This chapter was mostly to prove to myself that I could still work on something besides _Moonshine Glories_, since that story has been consuming most of my attention lately. And to answer some of your questions about the story, and as a sort of backwards birthday present to myself, so I'll get lots of pretty reviews for my birthday ) Lots of reasons.

**Edited note:** Oh, and no, there are no pairings in here beyond what's canon for _Serenity_, so get your minds out of the gutter, people! It's platonic love!

As I finish writing this, it's just past midnight, so in about two hours I'll be 18!

* * *

16 July 2006


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